The San Francisco Giants dismissed manager Gabe Kapler on Friday, after a late-season collapse that knocked the club out of postseason contention and raised doubts about the organisation’s future direction.
The dismissal comes with three games left in the season and the Giants sitting at 78-81. Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ president of baseball operations, said in a statement that he made a “recommendation to ownership” to terminate Kapler and subsequently did so after “receiving their approval.”
Kai Correa will oversee the Giants’ last three games.
Kapler, 48, took over as Giants manager in 2020 and led the team to a 107-55 record by 2021, the first time a team finished ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West in the previous 11 years. The Dodgers won the division series that year, and San Francisco failed to recreate its success past season, finishing 81-81.
While owner Greg Johnson had promised to retain Zaidi and Kapler through the conclusion of their contracts in 2024, he backtracked on Kapler, opening up another management post in a winter that is likely to be crowded.
Terry Francona of the Cleveland Indians will retire after this weekend, while the contracts of Milwaukee’s Craig Counsell, Houston’s Dusty Baker, and the Los Angeles Angels’ Phil Nevin, as well as the New York Mets’ Buck Showalter and San Diego’s Bob Melvin, are up in the air.
The Giants seemed to be on the mend in the days after the All-Star break. They were 13 games above.500 for the season and just 112 games behind the Dodgers. San Francisco’s 24-40 record since July 18 is the second-worst in the NL, and the Giants have dropped behind the Arizona Diamondbacks and the San Diego Padres in the standings.
The dissatisfaction bubbled to the surface in recent weeks, as the Giants finished the month with an 8-17 record. “I’m tired of losing,” said Logan Webb, who is 11-13 this season despite leading the NL in innings thrown and strikeout-to-walk ratio. It’s not pleasant. It’s not enjoyable. We need to make some significant adjustments in order to foster the winning culture that will allow us to compete for the championship every year.”
According to Zaidi, the Giants played their “worst baseball when it mattered the most.”
“To go out on that last road trip still in the wild card, still controlling our own destiny and then playing the way we did when we controlled our own destiny, those are hard to watch for everybody,” Zaidi said. “It was difficult for the players to go through, difficult for the fans to watch, and difficult for us as an organisation to watch.” That increased our realisation that we needed to make tough choices and think about things differently.”
With just $110 million committed to their payroll in 2024 – and only $45 million committed in 2025 – the Giants are anticipated to be active in free agency this winter, including a pursuit of superstar Shohei Ohtani.
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